Data is usually in one logical database. Data may be replicated locally, for availability and performance. It may be replicated remotely, for availability, disaster recovery, and performance. But it’s still usually logically in one database.

Now remote geographic partitioning may be required by law. Some technologies (e.g. Cassandra) support that for a single logical database. Some don’t.

Even under best circumstances, hosting and administrative costs are likely to be higher when a database is split across more geographies (especially when the count is increased from 1 to 2).

This is about data storage, not data use; for example, you can analyze Austrian data in the US, but you can’t store it there.

Of course, that can be a tricky distinction to draw. We can only hope that intermediate data stores, caches and so on can be allowed to use data from other geographies.

Assuming the law is generous in this regard, scan-heavy analytics are more problematic than other kinds.

But if there are any problems in those respects — well, if analytics can be parallelized in general, then in particular one should be able to parallelize across geographies. (Of course, this could require replicating one’s whole analytic stack across geographies.)

2. US law enforcement is at loggerheads with major US tech companies, because it wants the right to subpoena data stored overseas. The central case here is a request to get at Microsoft’s customer data stored in Ireland. A government victory would be catastrophic for the US tech industry, but I’m hopeful that sense will — at least to some extent — prevail.

3. Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and numerous other luminaries are pushing something called the Snowden Treaty, as a model for how privacy laws should be set up. I’m a huge fan of what Snowden and Greenwald have done in general, but this particular project has not started well. First, they’ve rolled the thing out while actually giving almost no details, so they haven’t really contributing anything except a bit of PR. Second, one of the few details they did provide contains a horrific error.

Specifically, they “demand”

freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny …

To that I can only say: “Have you guys lost your minds???????” As written, that’s a demand that can only be met by censorship laws. I’m sure this error is unintentional, because Greenwald is in fact a stunningly impassioned and articulate opponent of censorship. Even so, that’s an appallingly careless mistake, which for me casts the whole publicity campaign into serious doubt.

4. As a general rule — although the details of course depend upon where you live — it is no longer possible to move around and be confident that you won’t be tracked. This is true even if you’re not a specific target of surveillance. Ways of tracking your movements include but are not limited to:

5. The previous point illustrates that the strong form of the Snowden Treaty is a pipe dream — it calls for a prohibition on mass surveillance, and that will never happen, because:

Governments will insist on trying to prevent “terrorism” before the fact. That mass surveillance is generally lousy at doing so won’t keep them from trying.

Governments will insist on being able to do general criminal forensics after the fact. So they’ll want mass surveillance data sitting around just in case they find that they need it.

Businesses share consumers’ transaction and interaction data, and such sharing is central to the current structure of the internet industry. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. Besides, if it did, a few large internet companies would have even more of an oligopolistic advantage vs. the others than they now do.

The huge problem with these truisms, of course, is scope creep. Once the data exists, it can be used for many more purposes than the few we’d all agree are actually OK.

6. That, in turn, leads me back to two privacy posts that I like to keep reminding people of, because they make points that aren’t commonly found elsewhere:

Comments

From my reading of the verdict, transferring Austrian data to the US for analysis would also be forbidden, i.e. it isn’t only about storage. If Microsoft loses to the DoJ, a US company would not be allowed to operate even if it operates data centers in Europe.

One little scrutinized mechanism for tracking movements is Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS). Those little wireless pressure sensors are mandated by law in all cars built after 2007. While they are useful at alerting you of potentially catastrophic tire depressurization, they can also be used to track you as each TPM has its own 28-bit to 32-bit unique ID:https://cse.sc.edu/~wyxu/papers/TPMSUsenix.pdf